Free The Child Taker & Slow Burn by Conrad Jones

away.
    “What happened then?” Tank asked Grace but she just frowned and shook her head.
    “He was watching the news then he flipped,” she replied quietly. She touched the Major’s shoulder tenderly, his shoulders sagging beneath her touch.
    “Major, what’s wrong?”
    “The missing twins on the news… I have to get home immediately,” he rambled. The colour was returning to his cheeks and he seemed to stiffen up as he composed himself.
    “I don’t understand, Major,” Tank said. He looked at the screen and recognised the woman immediately. His eyes widened in shock as he digested the headlines at the bottom of the screen.
    “The missing twins that were on the news… The woman making the appeal was my daughter, Hayley, and the twins are my grandchildren.”

Chapter Ten
     
    Taking the twins had been one of the easier abductions that he had executed. Things had fallen into place nicely: the parents arguing and then separating, combined with his decoy of course, which was a stroke of genius. He’d stolen the idea from an American serial killer. It worked like a dream by luring the father away from his children. The other adults were too preoccupied by their drink-fuelled passion to be of any consequence. Carrying the sleeping bag through the woods with the unconscious twins inside was physically taxing but adrenalin and pure greed drove him onwards to his waiting van. The van was a white Ford, one of millions that congest Britain’s roads every day. The journey home was uneventful and he stopped only to re-medicate the twins and to change the plates. He swapped the registration plates three times to prevent the police tracking him via the motorway’s closed circuit television cameras. Each set of plates matched a Ford of the exact make and model he was driving.
    He had a caravan parked up in a quiet lay-by a few hours away. Anyone curious enough to have stopped their car on the quiet back road would have been satisfied that it was a tired tourist resting on a long journey, or a traveller stealing a free berth for the night. The bland caravan was inconspicuous enough when he hooked it up to the back of his Transit and an ideal place to stay one step ahead of the law enforcement agencies. He smiled as he watched his portable television. The televised appeal for information by the parents had just finished and the child taker knew that his internet inbox would be filling up with messages. The buyer and the unsuccessful bidders would now realise that the merchandise had been acquired and the bidding war would begin again in earnest. The buyer would be furious of course – after all a price had been agreed and a deal had been brokered, but he wasn’t selling microwave ovens and there was no integrity in this world. It always happened that way in this business. Interested parties were sceptical as to whether the children would actually materialise or if it was another internet fraud. The early bidding reflected their scepticism. There was nothing like a good televised appeal to whet their appetites and stoke up the bidding war again. The same thing had happened with the last four children that he had taken, and the price more than doubled once the second round of bidding opened. It was the same bidders that usually competed. He had customers from four different continents but the buyer this time was also the highest bidder the last time around. In fact, they had mentioned that they wanted twins, specifically mixed-sex twins, and that they would pay handsomely for them. They were also kind enough to give him the details of the family. Jack wondered why at first, but an order is an order. It was only when he realised how valuable they were that he decided to renege on the deal and put them on general sale.    
    He checked the pictures that he’d taken with his digital camera. There were twelve in total, three of the twins sleeping in their pyjamas and nine of them naked. The child taker was tempted to indulge